Introduction

Audio

Hi! I'm Wizard Lizard, or Wiz Liz. My pronouns are she/them. Welcome to my blog!

I am a non-binary transfeminine anarcho-communist bi-racial tabletop RPG designer.
That's a mouthful but I'll only say it this once (ok maybe here and there I'll use that card to Point Out Important Political Stuff), and the hobby is predominantly cisgender heterosexual white men so, booh, be very very scared.

I am also a student in research and an escort girl. I like art and people. I am also clinically insane - I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD (it's DID, actually) and Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder. My work would be better if I was not crazy, but it is how it is in part because I am crazy.

I like minimalism and I call my games "adventure fantasy games" or "FKR" or "OSR".
What I mean is that I run and play rules-light, procedures-heavy games focused on emergent narrative and simulation, much like the wargamer proto-roleplayers of the beginning of the hobby. Unlike them, I'm not super into colonialism or polearms. We roll few or no dice but we treat them as oracles and arbiters of fate - there is no plot or expectations of how the game will go, the story is a by-product of play and the point of the game is to play the game.

I think the terms are interchangeable, and was part of the initial movement to get the ball rolling about FKR. My goal was to fuck with how crystallized and hyperfocused on mechanics the OSR seemed to have become from my perspective. I feel like the same has happened with "FKR" so I don't really use the term that much anymore. I just run games and share my thoughts about them. I hate you.

Not you of course, you're great, keep reading, go buy my stuff there's a link on the side!

I have edited this article in 2022. I was a very different person when I started this blog and it may show in my older articles. I've curated what I thought was intolerable but out of artistic integrity I mostly kept things as they were. Sometimes I said problematic shit, probably. I had problematic friends. I'm better now. Cancel me, see if I care.

I do readings of my more recent articles when I write them. Sometimes I go off-script, it's kind of easter eggs, kind of stream of consciousness editing. It's also a matter of accessibility, I want people to be able to read my stuff even if they don't want to read or can't read or whatever. Like Blogs on Tapes.

Adventure Games are great fun, anyone can run a good game, don't let gatekeepers or idiot savants fool you into believing otherwise. You don't need big rulebooks, you don't need to watch Critical Role, you barely need dice and paper/pencils. You do need safety tools and not-shitty people to play with, preferably friends. Everything I write assumes a high-trust environment, that is, everyone buys into the game being played and its expectations of play via a conversation that happens before the game. People don't act like babies and say what they want or care about or don't care about. If you don't have a high-trust environment because you're at a convention game or whatnot, you need tools to build it fast, but I don't know about that because I prefer to play with friends.

Voilà. Oh yeah I'm fr*nch too.